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Tuesday, July 14, 2015

The Worst Of The Worst

I’ve ranted and raved about so many different subjects – see the list of labels at the tail of this blog if you’d like a summary – that a casual surfer-by would have some reason to suspect that I simply detest everything and everyone. That happens not to be the case...but there are some things that stoke my fires very high indeed. One in particular has risen to the front of my thoughts in recent days, and the time has come to vent it.

I’m going to play a little coy and not be specific about it up-front. Let’s see if you can discern it before the conclusion of this piece.

Jasper Spires boarded the Red Line Metro train at Rhode Island Avenue shortly before 1 p.m. Saturday, joining passengers from the District and elsewhere headed to various Fourth of July festivities, among them the Foo Fighters concert at RFK Stadium.

As the train rumbled toward its next stop, at NoMa-Gallaudet, a three-minute ride, D.C. police said, the 18-year-old Spires — who may have been high on synthetic drugs — tried to grab a cellphone tucked into the waistband of a recent American University graduate headed to a gathering with friends.

The two struggled, police said, and the terror began.

Police and a witness interviewed said passengers trapped in the moving train huddled at both ends of the car and watched in horror as Spires punched 24-year-old Kevin Joseph Sutherland until he fell to the floor, then stabbed him until he was dead. Court documents say the victim was cut or stabbed 30 or 40 times, in the chest, abdomen, back, side and arms. Police said the assailant then threw the victim’s cellphone and returned to stomp on Sutherland’s body.

For those of you who don’t click through, trusting me to provide the meat and potatoes, here’s a picture of the criminal:

HUD announced enforcement of its new 377-page rule called the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Rule which will allow them to move people from poor crime-ridden areas into “wealthy” suburbs. It was announced by leftist Julian Castro Monday. The rule has force behind it. Federal monies will be withheld and lawsuits accusing residents of racism will be filed. Any town that takes federal funds will be transformed.

It is not only forcing unnecessary racial integration, it’s forcing class integration and the destruction of the local governments who will officially become satellites of the urban areas. Neighborhoods will be diversified according to income levels. The plan is to make us into a classless society of the type Karl Marx promoted.

With this rule, HUD will have control of zoning, transportation, and education and, in the end, the politics. Just as the leftists took over the cities one-by-one, they will be able to consume the suburbs only at a far more rapid pace. This can be done on a massive, almost immediate scale.

There about 44 million Americans living in the cities and almost 122 million Americans in the suburbs. Suburbia tends to vote against the leftists and has long been a thorn in their side.

Using racism and ecology as excuses, Obama is orchestrating, through HUD and the EPA, the end of local government rule.

Scared? If you live in a middle class suburban neighborhood, you should be. Hell, if you live in a blue collar suburban neighborhood, you should be. Local governments almost never resist the lure of federal bucks...the acceptance of which is always a package deal that comes with radically increased federal regulation. That’s how the educrats in D.C. got so much control of our “local” public schools, remember? So unless your neighborhood is filled with happy homeowners who wouldn’t sell if they were offered the sun, the moon, and the stars, and so tightly built up that no further construction is possible, you’ll soon have an influx of new neighbors...neighbors who have about the same amount of respect for the law and the norms of civilized societies as Barack Hussein Obama.

I know racists exist. Everybody knows that. Indeed, preference for one’s own kind, be it race, ethnicity, political affiliation, culture, religion, family etc… is a natural instinct of mankind. You will never equalize it, nor should you. Some mild preference for one’s own kind is natural and generally harmless, because it has a tendency to cancel out. One author I read called this “Sunset Segregation” wherein folks could live and work together without acrimony or hate, but when they went home at sunset, they tended to go to neighborhoods with others like them in whatever respect (again, race isn’t the only factor here, either, something Leftists often forget). This sort of thing created Chinatowns and Italian blocks, Black neighborhoods and White suburban retreats. In American it was once common to see cities have separate Catholic areas, Jewish quarters, and Protestant zones, etc…

The point I’m getting at here is that humans will self-segregate in the absence of authority. It is human nature. You cannot change this without gross tyranny. Nor should you. Instead, your goal should be peaceful relations between these groups and to eliminate government discrimination. Indeed, you may even strive to merge the groups over time into one group. The term for this is ethnogenesis, wherein two cultures/groups/races/etc… become one — America used to at least try to practice this. When, for example, Whites and Blacks meet in the course of their daily lives, the interactions should be friendly, helpful and peaceful. Today, Whites often feel like they must walk on eggshells with Blacks, and Blacks feel acrimony toward Whites for historical events and contemporary media shilling.

That’s as concise a summary of the impossibility of the left-liberal pseudo-ideal of “diversity” as I’ve seen. Dystopic’s insight elicited a book-length argument from the great Richard Epstein, but for those with eyes to see and ears to hear, the evidence was already sufficient.

That’s three.

Fourth, consider the following articles, which are worth reading in their entirety:

The tone of contempt with a side of pity is unmistakable. Indeed, that attitude can be found in many places, including some that semi-regularly foster such contempt. Allow me one snippet from John Davidson’s article about the Jasper Spires incident at the Federalist:

Morally, the choice facing the passengers on that subway car on July 4 was no different than the one facing the United 93 passengers on 9/11. It doesn’t matter if it’s one life or one thousand, the principle is what counts.

The United 93 passengers understood that principle, which in fact is nothing more than the Golden Rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. I, for one, would want someone to help me if a man with a knife attacked me on the subway, especially if he were winning the fight.

Tragically for Sutherland, no one on his subway car that day had the courage to live by this rule.

That’s four, and there will be no more. So tell me, Gentle Reader: what specific subject do you think, based solely on what you’ve read to this point, has my blood pressure up?

Write it down before you read on. I’ll give you a musical interlude before I continue. Enjoy a truly brilliant cover of one of Yes’s best pieces by Glass Hammer.

When I read the Washington Post article cited above, I was at first horrified. It struck me as the distillation of the “Genovese effect” in glorious living Technicolor. After reading the three articles cited in the “Fourth” segment above, I tried to place myself among the bystanders. I asked myself whether I would have felt any responsibility to intervene...and whether I would have suppressed it, ultimately doing no more than any of the men on that train.

I’d like to know if the persons who wrote in such scathing contempt of those men chanced to ask themselves those questions – and whether they can sincerely answer both of them yes. If they’ve intervened under similar circumstances, I can only praise them; if not, I would suggest that they harbor a little more doubt.

Consider this: To halt the murderer, you would have had to assault him with full force. More, you would have needed to go at him “no holds barred:” if killing him were necessary to halt him, you would have needed to kill him, for it’s clear from his actions that he was perfectly willing to kill a complete stranger for a cell phone.

Consider also this: the murderer was black, in a majority-black city. Had you done him any harm whatsoever, the racialist mouthpieces would have been after you in an instant. They would have howled for your scalp, just as they did for George Zimmerman and Darren Wilson. There’s no way to gauge the disruption it would have inflicted upon you. Had you needed to kill him, it’s odds on that you would face a murder inquiry, and quite possibly a trial for your life.

Finally, the “Genovese effect” is a real and potent influence. There were not one or two but many other persons in that subway car, thus distributing any responsibility over many heads. It has paralyzed other men in similar circumstances. Be not too sure that while all the others chose to stay their hands, you would have risen to the occasion.

Monday-morning quarterbacks never have to prove they would have performed better than the field generals they criticize. Indeed, their mettle cannot be tested, for we cannot reverse the arrow of time. That’s why the practice is so frequently and scornfully dismissed.

I submit to you that such second-guessing as we see in the articles in “Fourth” above is a symptom of a problem worse than the “beta male” phenomenon so widely derided by American writers on masculinity and related topics. If you need an additional hint, you’ll find it here.

Yes, the attenuation of the manly virtues is an important problem. It will become ever more important should HUD’s Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Rule gain traction with local governments. But there are few indeed who have wrenched themselves wholly clear of it, and fewer still among Internet commentators.

It's not just the "beta male" thing, it's the laws and courts. Even self-defense trainers like Massad Ayoob advise their students (like me) to leave when a violent act is going down if you possibly can, because if you use personal arms (a gun, knife, Taser or even pepper spray), you are likely to go to jail, even if you are the good guy, because "racism" and "vigilantism". And if you avoid going to jail, you are still going to be out $100,000 - $500,000, and you may be sued in civil proceedings to boot.

So, yeah, American society completely disincentivizes ANYONE from protecting ANYONE else except possibly their very close family. I sure would think twice.

This subject came up on a list I was a member of some years back, concerning whether or not you would have chosen to intervene during the Giffords shooting in Tucson. While I certainly wouldn't have been attending her rally, had I been near enough to respond, I would have, especially with the little girl (who died) - and other innocents - being targeted.

Since I have traveled all over this country (including in states where the legality of carrying was "questionable", let us say) _always_ prepared to protect my wife and myself, I would like to think that I would have stopped it at the appearance of the knife. It wouldn't have occurred to me to think of the legal ramifications, and the hell I would have gone through, post-incident.

Now, with the understanding of how things have changed post-Trayvon, Ferguson, DOJ targeting whites, and the race-mongering asshat currently infesting the WH, it gives me pause. Whose life is worth defending to the possible detriment of my wife, where she might lose everything we have worked hard to save and acquire, including our home, besides her possibly being the target of death threats by other dark-complected miscreants who want "white girl to bleed a lot".

For a child? No hesitation. For an elderly person, the same. For a woman? In the past I would have said "no hesitation", but then I think, what if it was Hillary, Moochelle, Pelosi, Feinstein, Boxer, Lynch, Kagan, Sotomayor, Ginsburg? Or even simply some Feminazi who thinks accusing an innocent man of rape is perfectly acceptable, or some lesbo-witches who claim "mind-rape", causing some poor bakers to be fined $135,000?

Not so long ago, I would have immediately gone to the aid of even a man, simply because of the situation, being stabbed by an animal - drugged or not - for a cell phone. Now I would still do it, but only if it was legal for me to be carrying in that jurisdiction. The threat to my wife's well-being were I to be arrested for "illegal" possession in spite of what I feel is a duty to defend someone from serious injury or death _might_ make me hesitate. I'm no longer confident that I would do what I _used_ to believe was the right thing. That doesn't make me feel very good about myself.